ROBERT BLOOM

Beautiful oboist ○ Dedicated mentor ○ Talented composer ○ Exciting conductor ○ Seminal editor ○ Performer of 18th-century masterworks ○ Master of the bel canto style –Dayenu!

Dedication of Robert Bloom’s Monument

Welcome by Sara Lambert Bloom

Musical interludes: Prelude from Suite No. 1 in G major by J.S. Bach; Its A Long Way to Go Home by K. Bloom; and Going Home, the Largo from the New World Symphony by A. Dvorak performed live by Timothy Eddy, Katherine Bloom with David Shapiro, and Marilyn Krentzman, who will be playing the English horn that his maître, Marcel Tabuteau brought back from Paris for Robert Bloom when Maestro Leopold Stokowski invited Robert to join the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1930.

Blessing of the monument by Reverend Ian Oliver, Pastor of the University Church and Senior Associate University Chaplain at Yale, and Lecturer at the Yale Divinity School; and Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale and Senior Rabbi at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale

A Concert in Remembrance of Robert Bloom

Free and open to the public; unreserved seating
 Battell Chapel, Yale University
Noon on Saturday, May 6, 2023

Program Booklet – Click Here

Yom Hashoah – Monday April 17-18

Join us in commemorating Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) tonight at 8:00pm. We will be meeting in the Slifka Lobby, lighting candles, and then walking over to The Women’s Table for a short ceremony.

Here is a short reflection to ponder from Springboard Fellow and Engagement Coordinator Aviva Green.

When I think of this day, the image that comes to me is a library only half full with books. There are shelves packed with volumes, with pages worn with use, dogeared corners and words and sentences underlined. Others are more sparse, with large and spacious gaps between books.

These are the stories of the Holocaust. Some are full of source material and others not. The emptiness in the library, the dusty, cobwebbed gaps in the bookshelf, are the silences. For countless stories there are no papers to sift through, no photos to frame, nothing to make them known to us in the voice to which they belong. It is an impossible archival task. It becomes easy to let these silences become a vacuum, to let them draw you into a dark crevasse, to let them be truly void, and worse, abandoned. 

But if you listen close enough, these silences vibrate. They hum with faint sounds muffled by a violent erasure. They are tuned to a certain key. The silences are thick and viscous, as if you were to scoop some of it out, it would pour like honey, dripping with the sticky residue of narratives refusing to be forgotten. 

For the people for whom we have no tangible record, those who are represented by these silences, we imagine. Not by fabricating their stories, but by thinking expansively. We use our creative and collective power to listen to that certain key. We grieve the loss of a tangible record while creating a whole new one. To turn nothingness into beautiful and haunting renderings of a past that is deeply connected to the present. We turn to poetry, art, music to pick up where the gaps in the bookshelf left off. Through adding these pieces to the bookshelf, we make sure their stories stay alive, remembered, and retold. 

The Bagel Brunch Calender for Spring 2023 is

1/22  –  Hillel Student Board Open House
2/5  – 1,000 Bagels
2/19 – You Belong Here Brunch
3/5 – Pre-game for Mid Terms  — Followed by Purim Carinval!
— Last bagel brunch before break!
4/23 – Magevet Anniversary!
4/30 – Last Bagel Brunch of the Semester!

Jewish or non-Jewish—all Yale community members are welcome at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. Our bi-monthly bagel brunches offer the perfect setting to meet friends and experience belonging at Yale.

Click Here to read an Op Ed by Edward Kuperman on the experience at Slifka’s Kikar Schusterman

So I leave you with a call to action: Whatever your religious or dietary needs, go gather a few friends and grab a meal at Slifka. There’s a good chance you find chicken tendies or a falafel bar, sweet, piping kugel or perhaps the most delicious bagel of your life — but what’s certain is that by eating at Slifka, you are choosing to celebrate a tradition of inclusion where everyone is welcome. For me, that’s what “proper” eating is all about.

Rothko Sukkah Design Competition at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale  

First Round Proposals Due April 1, 2023 

The Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale is seeking an architect, engineer, designer, and or artist to design and execute a new sukkah, which will be graciously funded by the Weiss family. Slifka is looking for someone to think expansively about what a sukkah can look and feel like. As a temporary dwelling associated with themes of joy, fragility, transience, and freedom, the sukkah provides the opportunity to embody these ideals, and more, in the physical space. The Weiss Family Sukkah will live at Slifka and be put together for every Sukkot.  

The competition will function in two rounds. The first round will be focused on the conceptual and the second on turning these conceptual ideas into a technically sound structure.  

Please reach out to Aviva Green (aviva.green@yale.edu) with any questions.  

Round 1 

Through the embodiment of the above listed themes, the sukkah and the space it occupies are fertile ground to ask questions about openness, tradition, and the public and the private. Four specific images from the Jewish tradition provide conceptual grounding for these questions: clouds of glory; the sukkat shalom; the inversion of the ephemeral and permanent; and the harvest festival. As such, Rachel Leiken, the associate Jewish chaplain at the Slifka Center, taught a learning session about these images, which was recorded. To view the Zoom recording and the accompanying source sheet, please email Aviva at Aviva.green@yale.edu.

In this round, you will be asked to contemplate one of these images and how one can acknowledge, investigate, grapple with, and transform them into space. Thinking deeply about the ways in which they can guide the creation of new experiences within an altered space, you will be asked to create a vision of how a sukkah can accomplish this.    

Please submit this form by April 1. Please note that if selected, you will be asked to translate your vision into a physical structure, which needs to fulfill the requirements of traditional Jewish law; have easy to follow instructions for assembly; be easily packed away, stored, and reassembled; and have replacement parts that can be readily acquired. The dimensions of the terrace where the sukkah will be built are 28’x61’-6”. To view photos of this space, click here.  

Round 2 

Selected finalists will be given a stipend of $2,500, two months, and detailed dimensions of the Slifka space to create a detailed design and execution plan for a sukkah, grounding in the conceptual vision from round one. There will be a virtual session with all finalists open to the Slifka community for a question and answer session. The second round of proposals will be due on June 22, 2023. The winner will receive an additional $2,500. The winner will need to be able to execute the building of the Sukkah over the summer/early fall of 2023. Slifka will cover all travel expenses.